Human Stompy

@desolutionist Are you ummm. . .kidding? No Urgency? Have you SEEN what Ballista Shop decks can do? Have you seen what Paradoxical Outcome decks can do?

With regards To Ballista Shops, that's exactly why I'm suggesting a fatter approach. You're not going to get there with x/1s and x/2s. The early game could be to survive with PtE and Sudden Shock so that you can get to the late game and cast stuff that they cannot deal with.

With regards to Paradoxical Outcome, it's an unimpressive deck. You can slow them down quite a bit with minimal disruption and take cheap shots to close it out. A single card like Hammer Mage and Stony Silence is devastating to them. Then a well timed Wasteland and it's game over. It's not even a major part of the meta game because it's so bad against the top decks.

@Serracollector Absolutely I have considered it and it's always been a borderline include. It sucks because they've now printed another juicy dude that is R in color which makes my old plan of 2 Horizon Canopy no good anymore cause of the reliance on Red again. Otherwise I'd probably run 2 Canopy and 1 Karakas and 1 Ziggurat and call it a day. The list has some mainstay cards but I also think there is much room for innovation, hence the thread Necro :).

5 moxen, 4 Revoker, and 4 Rod would be roughly one quarter of the deck. That should be enough to run a 2-2 split on ziggeraut and spire I would think. Most your guys have a colorless in CC anyways, so you wont be pinging yourself everytime you use it.

@desolutionist I think that Stoneforge Mystic is one of the better cards you can play against Shops and Eldrazi. The fact that it's decent against Mentor as well makes it my current go-to strategy in hatebears.

For clarity, I wouldn't play it in 5-color humans, but in slower, more prison oriented builds.

Eldrazi and Shops are definitely the two hardest matchups. Stoneforge Mystic helps and the 4 Swords in the sideboard do as well. But besides this package, I've never found something that I'm really happy about and confident in. Serenity is the latest thing for me to test. If deployed correctly, it can be a game winning card, but the downside is that is destroys my own Null Rod, equipment, Revokers and artifact acceleration. And it doesn't help against Eldrazi. Devout Witness is another thing I'm trying out, and once again if it sticks, it's gonna win you the game against Shops, but it's slow and loses to Revoker and Ballista. Perhaps I should just play 3 more Sword effects in those spots haha.

I'd love any suggestions. I'm also thinking about Gisela, the Broken Blade and Baneslayer Angel but have yet to try them out. I like the idea of big creatures with lifelink (and first strike). I would love it if they had vigilance as well though.

On the 5-color Humans archtype, I think that Stormanimagus' list is a good starting point and it looks very solid.

I have only briefly tested out Harsh Mentor so I haven't really been doing enough testing to comment on it, but I think what's already been said is on point: It's good vs Shops and less good - but not useless - against Mentor and other blue decks which are the two archtypes you want to focus on beating at first.

I have been playing some 5-color humans lately, and that version included 3 Kambal, Consul of Allocation and 2 Scab-Clan Berserker but otherwise it looked a lot like Stormanimagus' list. I did play Ancient Ziggurat as well and never had problems with my manabase.

I would like to support Stormanimagus' claim that if you're not running Mantis Rider, you're doing something wrong. My initial list had Prophetic Flamespeaker instead but I soon realised that I missed Mantis Rider. Prophetic Flamespeaker turned out too slow. I would also like to point out that Phyrexian Revoker is the right way to go, as in it's necessary for the deck. Palace Jailer is absolutely bonkers. It's like Reflector Mage and Dark Confidant in one card.

Last, I don't think I would run Mental Misstep maindeck but I guess that's a metagame call.

@Topical_Island Depending on the B&R announcement, I've been working on a build of The Mountains Win Again that runs a large Humans suite with Cavern of Souls. Harsh Mentor, Magus of the Moon and Scab-Clan Berserker seem like a nasty trio.

@Griselbrother they're not really a non-bo, right? It just turns off their stuff entirely and you keep a 2/2 to attack with. It's not exactly synergistic, but being able to make the tactical decision of "Pay 2 life: Use Ability" might be worse than "Can't use ability, getting attacked by a 2/2"

@Griselbrother they're not really a non-bo, right? It just turns off their stuff entirely and you keep a 2/2 to attack with. It's not exactly synergistic, but being able to make the tactical decision of "Pay 2 life: Use Ability" might be worse than "Can't use ability, getting attacked by a 2/2"

It's true that they aren't a non-bo but Moon effects in general are a non-bo with this manabase. Not being able to cast like anything in my deck could lead to major issues most of the time.

@Griselbrother they're not really a non-bo, right? It just turns off their stuff entirely and you keep a 2/2 to attack with. It's not exactly synergistic, but being able to make the tactical decision of "Pay 2 life: Use Ability" might be worse than "Can't use ability, getting attacked by a 2/2"

Perhaps not a nonbo but there's some (too much?) dissynergy. I think you've got to ask yourself if you really want to be playing Harsh Mentor when you've got like 7 cards (that makes it much worse). I'm not saying it necessarily wrong to do so, but I question it.

@Griselbrother agreed on necessity to question it, I was only thinking about how to improve odds of drawing a "similar" effect. I can ultimately agree that it's too much or we're certain enough of having enough other lock pieces, but that's why i phrased it that way.

Magus is for sure a non-bo with the mana bases of the best human decks from recent years (Storm's Humans that won in Spain spring to mind here.), but a couple questions spring to my mind at least.

Firstly, could you just jam a couple Magus into some version of Humans as a sort of uncounterable (off of Cavern), Armageddon-like effect to just end games where you have already played out a Thalia, into Mantis Rider, into Reflector Mage and then Magus is the cherry on top that never lets them replay the Smasher you just put back in their hand.... ? Maybe? I kinda doubt this would work myself... but maybe some slightly redder version of humans with Harsh Mentor is out there where Magus is a capstone sort of lock piece. The destroying your own manabase does seem like a problem though.

Assuming that Harsh Mentor is good, I actually think that something along these lines with 4 Magus, 4Harsh, and 2-4 Blood Moon might be pretty tough, since the opponent will be dealing with a Magus or a Harsh nearly all the time, and will be faces with crazy problems like having to try to remove Magus, so that a Flooded Strand can become not a Mountain, and instead become a fetchland that costs 3 life to use. If a second Harsh comes down, it now costs 5, and at that point shouldn't they just be in such an impossible situation that there is no getting out? I'm also optimistic about this angle, since Magus seems great against both Eldrazi (which I think is the worst matchup for Humans) and Mentor, while Harsh seems great against Shops. Now just add some number of Eidolons and you have multiple, on-color, mainboard answers for a huge chunk of the metagame. (56% of top 8 decks in the last year, going by mtgtop8)